Duncan well-rested for game in tough venue for Spurs

PHILADELPHIA — Spurs captain Tim Duncan will show up tonight at Wells Fargo Arena, site of the Spurs’ Martin Luther King Day game against the 76ers.

Then he will wait to find out if his services will be required on the court.

“I just show up, and (Spurs coach Gregg Popovich) tells me what to do,” Duncan said after serving as cheerleader-in-chief during a 98-93 victory over the Hawks on Saturday at Atlanta’s Philips Arena. “I’ll be ready to go if he allows me to play. So I’ll show up and see what he says.”

Of course, Duncan knows he will be in uniform and jumping center at tipoff, but he also understands the reason Popovich held him out of the second game in a set of contests on back-to-back days.

By defeating the Hawks without him, the Spurs received a bonus going into tonight’s game — Duncan will be well-rested against a physical team that is trying to reverse a recent slide that threatens its playoff hopes.

Tonight’s game is the Spurs’ third in four nights and the first in another week in which they play four games. The NBA’s schedule makers have crammed 43 Spurs games into the first 11 weeks of the season. That’s a slate that is nearly as busy as the 60-game season the league crammed into four months after last season’s ?lockout.

The frenetic early schedule was clearly a factor in Popovich’s latest exercise in reducing the workload on his 36-year-old big man, who is on his way to his best season in years.

Duncan insists he still feels good physically, but he knows better than to argue when Popovich asks him to sit out.

“I never fight him,” he said. “You lose every time.”

Tony Parker did the heavy lifting against the Hawks, especially in the fourth quarter. He will be happy to cede a big chunk of the offensive load against Philadelphia to Duncan.

“Timmy will be back, and that will definitely help,” Parker said. “If not, I may have to kill myself. He took a day off (in Atlanta), and I think that was a great move by Pop. He will be rested and full of energy against Philadelphia, and we’re going to need all of that.”

Even during the Spurs’ best seasons, Philadelphia has been a tough place to find victories. Over the past 12 seasons, they have won in the City of Brotherly Love only three times, including a 100-90 win last season.

“In Philadelphia, for whatever reason, we have had a hard time finding a way to win,” Parker said. “Last year, we won for the first time in a long time.

“… They have a great defense. They collapse the paint and contest things in the paint, so we’re going to have to make shots.

“Hopefully, Danny (Green) and Gary (Neal) and Kawhi (Leonard) will make shots and open it up for me.”

The Sixers’ homecourt has not meant much to them this season — they have won only 11 of 20 games there. They are 2-2 at home since returning from a grueling seven-game road trip that covered two weeks and ended in San Antonio. In that game, the Spurs recorded a 109-86 victory in which neither Parker nor Duncan played in the fourth quarter.

Andrew Bynum, the All-NBA center acquired last summer from the Lakers, has yet to play a game for Philadelphia. Bothered by bone bruises in both knees, he only recently began doing some running in practices.

The Sixers gave up Andre Igoudala, Mo Harkless and Nikola Vucevic in that deal. Jason Richardson, who came to Philadelphia from Orlando, has been a starter in 33 games.